This is my go to salad. For the past few years, I’ve eaten it just about every day and I still crave it! It’s simple, fresh, crisp and the vegetable medley has all the right flavors and textures. Plus, you can change this base recipe with the addition of olives, tomatoes, pumpkin seeds, grilled veggies, roasted sweet potatoes, and more! Not to mention the hundreds of salad dressing variations that would be great too. Typically, I just use Kasandrinos olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, and some celtic grey sea salt. Money. I can’t stress to you guys enough how important quality ingredients are. If you start with delicious ingredients, then your meal is going to taste way better! Short answer, it matters. Start to taste every ingredient you cook with. And fall in love with the flavors that mother nature provides us with. It’s a miracle, really.

One of the biggest game changers for prepping a salad is giving it a ten minute ice bath and spin dry. It’s everything. It livens up the greens and halts the decaying process, which extends the life of your lettuce. And if you have wilted greens, give them an ice bath and they will come back to life!

Every week I prep a huge salad and keep it in the fridge for easy grabs. I try to put a handful of raw greens with every meal and having a salad prepped ahead of time is a huge time saver. Typically a huge bowl of greens will last around 5 days in the fridge and it makes me so happy that it stays crisp the entire time.

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Base Salad

This is my base salad recipe. Add whatever you have on hand and play around with the variations. I always go with red leaf and romaine lettuce because they add a special crunch that I love. 

Course Salad

Prep Time 30 minutes

Servings 4

Ingredients

• 2 Heads Red leaf lettuce
• 1/4 Red cabbage, thinly sliced
• 1/4 Green cabbage, thinly sliced
• 3 Carrots, julienned
• 1 Bunch Radishes, thinly sliced
• 1-3 Bundles Green onions, sliced

Instructions

1. Find a large bowl and put a few cups of ice in it. Fill with water, then put your greens in. Cut the ends off your lettuce and pull apart the leaves. Ice bath for ten minutes.

   

2. Spin dry the lettuce. Be sure to remove the water in between spins, so it doesn't splash back on the lettuce. You will want to remove as much water as possible, as water is what speeds up the decay of the lettuce. Plus, no one likes soggy lettuce.

   

3. Chop lettuce into bite sized pieces. Then, set aside in a large bowl.

   

4. Prep ingredients.
   

   

5. Thinly slice cabbage, both red and green. Then, cut into smaller pieces.

   

6. Julienne carrots and chop into bite sized pieces.

   

7. Slice the green onions.
   

   

8. Prep radishes. Cut each end off, cut in half, place flat side down on cutting board, and slice them thin. You could also use a mandolin here.

   

9. Layer the vegetables over your red leaf lettuce and there you have it! A delicious and nutritious salad that can be enjoyed throughout your week!

   

10. It even goes great with breakfast! I love mine with high quality olive oil (Kasandrino's), lemon juice, and a sprinkling of sea salt. Yum! 

    

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